For more information, contact JaiKaur at jaikaur@jaikaur.com

Date/time: February 4, 2012 9:30 am – February 4, 2012 12:00 pm
Venue: Brookline Adult and Community Education
Address: 115 Greenough Street, Room 100, Brookline, MA, United States

One of the challenging truths my clients-men and women-hear me offer is how avoiding exercising our power often derives from a case of the “pleaser first, me seconds”.  And while we may truly believe a lack of conflict equals safety for ourself or a relationship, avoiding conflict is avoiding exercising power.  Not knowing how to exercise our power constructively we often choose instead to suppress expressing ourselves with integrity.  And we all know how well THAT works as a strategy! Conflict is natural, necessary, and an invitation for our power (expression of ourselves) for informing, illuminating, and uplifting ourselves and the other.

So how do you know if you are challenged with exercising your power?

1. You tell yourself it’s not a big deal when a friend or family member puts you down in front of others-again!-and you don’t speak up (for yourself) for that would not be nice. Instead, you spend the rest of the day silently seething and fantasizing about moving to where nobody in your family will ever find you!
2. You long for more intimacy with your lover than watching TV together every night and tell yourself to be satisfied and not “rock the boat” as you pour yourself yet another glass (how many is that tonight?) of wine.
3. You find yourself drawn to tending those at the end of their life, but finding a training program for hospice care that doesn’t interfere with the soccer carpool has been impossible.I mean, how can you ask others to put themselves out with helping you? What calls to you (heart and soul) will just have to wait until the kids are grown up and people don’t need you (never!).
4. You grew up learning how important making others happy was for making those around you happy in life, so pleasing others is easy. But as you sit in a yet another meeting at a job you truly dislike, you wonder is this really as good as your life gets?.

There is not a woman alive who does not experience insecurity at times with exercising her power…..when to speak up, where to show up, when to stand up.  What creates security and certainly in our expressions of power is new (really old) learning, practice, and the courage to honor power inside as well as outside. Exercising power as contemporary women requires our time and care for listening, trusting, and taking action from wisdom of the silence within ourselves. This is not the power we learned of control over others ….this is the power of the clarity of our wisdom, the courage we commit to living our convictions, and the compassion we offer ourselves and WITH the others in our life.

We live in a time of rapid evolution, our gift of a lifetime for our souls to evolve the sacred marriage of life as human. Whether we live in fear or live in faith and trust depends on our choices of beliefs, skills, and integrity we engage as we navigate our days…..days calling for living our grace in ways practical and for honoring the grit of life as sacred.

“Release and Renew” Ritual

1. Write down on separate slips of paper your resentments, your grudges, your anger and rages, the unforgiven, the wrong-doings of others to you, your sorrows, your depressions, the ones you despise….you get the idea.  Make certain each one gets written down on it’s own slip of paper.
2. Bury the slips of paper in the ground with sage or cedar if you have some, or if not, with some evergreen needles.  (If where you live does not allow you to bury the slips of paper, then burn the slips of paper and bury the ashes).
3. Write down on separate pieces of paper the seeds of what you will cultivate through this year….commiting to your compassion more than your judgment, commiting to transformations effortless through calling on grace vs believing it takes hard work and luck to create, commiting to being open to more questions and curiosity and needing to control less, etc.  Place your commitment seeds on your altar if you have one and if you do not have an altar, it’s time to create one!
4.  Pray for the next moon (30 days) on what your heart frowns upon as well as what lifts up your heart and soul.  In the realm of Sacred and Earth, all is energy and simply, our clarity is needed for what is released and what is renewed in our hearts and world.

Our human minds are powerful-and-placing our mind as the driver of our life was never meant to be it’s role.  As we move into our future,  our challenges will need us to meet them with our full capacity as human beings-the wisdom of our heart, the depth of our soul, and the infinite power and reach of our spirit.  As women, our innate caliber and capacity makes us leaders in living more of our depth and dimension as humans for creating the fabric of our daily life, containing the well-being of all in our communities, and allowing nothing save peace and harmony on this Earth.  
 

Make your dreams really really big for 2012, plant your seeds through commitment to your humanity and your divinity, and call upon the sacred to do the heavy lifting.  We are so blessed by our gift of a human life….simply, sometimes we forget we are powerful gods and goddesses walking this sacred ground of Earth.

Our life as humans is both a divine gift and an earthly journey; honoring both earth and heaven can be challenging when making our choices and our conclusions. Shakespeare observed “there is nothing either good nor bad, our thinking makes it so”. Our thinking is being challenged for evolving our heaven and earth partnership-our sacred marriage with life-and our concept of (heaven’s) blessings is calling for us to evolve as well.

Our human history is full of earthly thinking, and our future as humans on earth calls for more heaven for balance. When we make the clear, conscious, and courageous choice to receive all in life as a blessing, this does not mean to make the choice to condone all that is. Blessing all in life is consciously choosing to receive the guidance, wisdom, and support of our heart and soul for responding to life.

So in this week of focused attention on thanks-giving, bless all of your life…the good, the bad, and the who knows!…responding a bit more with your heart and soul and perhaps a bit less your thinking you know what is so……honoring yourself as both earth and heaven…..and what a blessing you be!

“Where is confusion about yourself as “a woman first” holding you back from exercising your power, purpose, and passion in your relationships, roles, and relishing of your life?”  I love working with women who decide to pick up their courage, exercise their clarity, and commit to action for creating more happiness, satisfaction, and impact in their life.  The “ah-ha” moment when a client real.izes how truly powerful she is can be a humbling (not humiliating) moment of reclaiming herself, her happiness, and her satisfaction in her relationships, roles, and relishing her life.

Woman are the sacred portal for human life and serve as teachers, healers, and leaders with life. Where woman are confused about their depth and dimension as women is where we confuse our history for our truth, our roles for our identity, and believe our grace as women is negotiable.  It is also where how we create problems, extend the lifetime of our challenges, and create drama vs engaging our power. A woman may begin working with me for easing a troubled relationship,  guidance for respect in her roles, or to feel happy again in her life…..and,  she soon realizes her problem/s as symptoms of forgetting to choose her power as “a woman first”. 

Contemporary woman remember, reclaim, and renew themselves more through honoring themselves as “a woman first” and the “to-do’s” of rules, roles, and relationships less.  Being “a woman first” is taking action on inner wisdom, embodying compassion in relationships, and living with clarity, courage, and certainty our dreams.   Being “a woman first” is knowing confusion is our invitation for inner clarity, self-criticism as our opportunity for compassion for ourselves, and conflict with others offers itself as a container for creative and deeper connection with the other. And contemporary times call for us to show up, stand up, and speak up….as women first.  We live in times scary and sacred, times calling for living times calling for living more of our power, purpose, and passion as a woman.

One of the challenge I offer to those I work with is “how are you taking action on your new awareness/desire/choice/commitment in your daily life?  While words are powerful, using words only for talk diminishes the power and clarity the authentic (root) meaning the word offers us for committing to action.

The root (Latin) meaning of the word “contemporary” is “together with” and I smiled to have found a word so accurate in describing the history of women’s leadership. While the word “contemporary” may currently mean “new/current/fashionable”, women’s leadership throughout history has been “together with” .  

Women for ages have been “together with” the birthing and nurturing of new life, “together with” healing, tending and caring for members of their community, “together with” those in old age and in death.  The leadership of women is not new, ever unfashionable, nor simply the leadership of men with a skirt and lipstick on it. 

So the next time you hear talk about the new and contemporary leadership of women, smile at knowing just how contemporary women’s leadership is and commit yourself more to taking action “together with” your deepest values and what is sacred in the life you lead as a woman.

 It is a glorious late summer morning not unlike the morning 10 years ago when an act of hate changed the lives of thousands, millions all over the world.  Even now I remember as though yesterday watching in horror on television the second plane go into the World Trade Center tower, a place iconic to New Yorkers and visitors alike.  I remember calling my children-my son in college, my daughter at high school-simply to feel their presence, and only began to cry when word came by phone that John was the captain of the American Airlines Flight #11 airplane.

We knew John Ogonowski first as the farmer who brought his hay to the horse barn where my older daughter worked and rode and for whom I brought coffee and donuts to those early cold Saturday am mornings as she and John unloaded the month’s hay. We talked about how loving the land and nature made up for much of what was crazy in the human world and how happy stewarding land made us.  We knew John secondly as an American Airlines captain committed to working a few more years until he could retire and tend his beloved farm full-time.

9/11 changed not only John’s dream and the dreams of so many people, it challenged all of us in how we respond to hate, violence, destruction when it’s personal.  “Being poor does not take away poverty, being angry does not take away anger, choosing revenge does not diminish violence” offers Wayne Dwyer.  Human brains are hard-wired to initially return aggression with aggression, and as the research and authors of the book “How God Changes Your Brain” illustrate,  choosing to meditate and other spiritual practices literally activate the capacity our brains contain for compassion and seeking to understand“the other”. 

 John’s farm continues through his brother Jim who still delivers hay for the horse barn. John lives on in the many ways he touched others as well as served through his farm’s commitment to helping Cambodian refuges farmers and those he flew as an American Airlines captain. New life came through John when his brother Jim married the owner of the horse barn who he met while stepping into farmer John’s shoes the first weeks after 9/11.  Life honors life by continuing forward, it is ours to choose how we honor the gift of our life so precious and so fragile. 

Contemporary spirituality is conscious partnering with our spirit and soul for practical guidance and support in our daily life. Contemporary spirituality is living grace that is practical and honoring the grit of life as sacred.  Contemporary spirituality honors the teachers that are animal, plant, and “the other” and contemporary spirituality honors our body as not simply a vehicle, rather as a teacher and healer divine.

Contemporary spirituality demands we update our beliefs, definitions, and concepts for daily living of our active, embodied, and emboldened spirituality as women.  Ask yourself these questions-your answers are for living in your daily life!  

• If you knew you were always being divinely guided and supported, how would you live differently your life?
• If you were to embrace “where you were planted”-to the beauty, to the challenges, to the gratitude-what would be different? 
• If you took 100% responsibility for your life vs deferring your power to “karma” or “God’s will” or “I have no power to make things different” where would you take up your voice, your power, your outrage? 
• If you truly honored your spirit and soul as your most intimate partner in life, how would the priorities for your time change? Would time for meditation, prayer, and self-care become less luxuries and more essentials in your daily life?

Contemporary spirituality is not about furthering our means of control; it is daily living our power, our purpose, and our presence as guardians for all life.  Contemporary spirituality honors relationship, integrity, and creativity and where these are lacking, the responsibility for bringing them forth. Contemporary spirituality is living there is truly no separation between what is spiritual and what is not spiritual….and that our humanity is simply divinity in a body.

Here are suggestions for honoring summertime’s “essential-sensuals”:

• Indulge in what delights your palate in the bounty of summertime foods!  Eating watermelon outside on a hot day, with it’s juices dripping down my chin and onto the ground delights the kid in me who still loves to make a mess!
• Know what delights you in Nature’s summertime offerings; while one of my summertime’s sensual-essential is a day at the beach, a day hiking in the mountains or canoeing in a lake may be the delight your body and soul will hallelujah with!
• Honor your summertime essential-sensuals as a top priority on your to-do list, receiving any feelings of resistance or pesky inner nay-saying voices as simply your invitation to meditate or journal on what challenges you in living your delight or essential pleasure!
• Be open to the “ah-has” which come through your physical delight and pleasure as essential wisdom for yourself and your life.  Our body’s wisdom is profound in it’s clarity and intelligence and learning to respond in our life with the “non-logical” wisdom of our body have a magical way of increasing our happiness and well-being!

Taking delight and pleasure in the sensations of our body is essential for not only our physical health and ease, it is essential for the fulfillment of our heart, soul, and life. We are beings that need food as well as nourishment through our sensual experiences.  When we honor our sensual as essential for creating happiness and well-being in life, a day at the beach becomes less a luxury and more the priority on the to-do list for every season!